


little boys grow up and dogs get old

by dyoxyys



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical War Mentions, Childhood Friends, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Fake Animals, Growing Up, M/M, Parent Death (Mentioned), Pets, The Inherent Domesticity of Co-Parenting an Animal, mild childhood trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25573807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dyoxyys/pseuds/dyoxyys
Summary: When Hakoda and Bato were young, they had a wolfseal.Bakoda Fleet Week Day Four: With Animals
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52
Collections: Bakoda Fleet Week 2020





	little boys grow up and dogs get old

Before they were soldiers, before their fathers were taken from them, before they were forced to hold the weight of the world, Bato and Hakoda had Kona. 

Kona had been the runt of the litter. She was also the only one to survive the year. The other pups, too young to be gifted with names, were killed in a raid. 

Of course, they didn't remember that. Masa had birthed her last litter before they were even allowed to go sledding. That was alright, though. Kona was enough. 

She had to be. She was the only one the tribe had.

And she was Bato's. 

Technically, she belonged to Bato's father. As an infant, she had been a bottle baby, nursed and cared for carefully by the largest and strongest man in the tribe. He trained her when she was old enough to learn, he took her in hunting trips for the first years of her life, he even gifted her a name on the Solstice. 

That didn't matter. She was Bato's wolfseal. This fact was clear from the moment they met. Little Bato was teetering along, stumbling as he practiced standing on ice, and Kona broke away from the elders watching over her and rushed to help the tiny child stay upright. 

She would never let him slip, even as he grew older and learned how to shift his weight and test the ice. They were absolutely inseparable. During Tribe culture lessons, Bato would be sitting on the outside of the group with his arms wrapped around her neck, both paying rapt attention. When he was learning to hunt, it was a given that she would be helping him along. When he made fast friends with the Chief’s younger son- 

Well. Kona didn’t actually like Hakoda.

When he and Bato would try and play Hide and Hunt, she would always give away his hiding space by running to him and growling. When they played Benders and Warriors, she would bark and refuse to let Hakoda chase Bato around. When they were practicing sparring, she got particularly aggressive and would frequently nip at his heels and wrists to keep him from raising his spear against her person.

Hakoda could not give less of a shit.

The tribe quickly grew used to seeing the young boy offering her fish and trying to gain her trust. At one point, he spent a whole moon cycle holding his friend’s hand and hugging him as frequently as possible to trick her into thinking he was Bato. It didn’t work. 

The few times Hakoda ran out in the morning and missed dinner at night, neither Bato nor his father could convince the wolfseal to help them find him.

By all accounts, she hated him.

Then, his father died. 

Suddenly, the energetic boy with the loud voice and sporadic motions was still and silent. He rarely let anyone near him. It wasn’t his first experience with death, he knew he had a sister who had died when he was two, but it was the first time it really hit him.

His dad was gone and he wasn’t coming back. It was okay for him to draw into himself and run away from responsibilities back then. Malook was still there. He was next in line to the Chieftan title, not Hakoda. Not yet.

So it was okay for Hakoda to run away and hide in an abandoned bear cave. His mother had told him he couldn’t outrun his grief and he couldn’t hide from his pain, but he was willing to try.

He was only there for a couple sunlengths before a massive form shadowed the entrance of the cave. He had feared it was the bear who used to occupy the cave, but he quickly realized that it was no bear at all.

It was Kona, and she was alone. Later, he would discover that she had run away to find him before even his own mother knew he was gone.

In that cave, Kona gained a new person. Bato would always be her primary, but after letting Hakoda sob into her fur and scream about how the world wasn’t fair, how the war was stupid, how he just wanted his dad to come home- 

She became very protective of the young boy.

It was jarring for the adults to see her gently lick his tears away when his emotions became too much for a nine-year-old to bear when just a few moon cycles ago she would’ve been raising her hackles at him for so much as breathing in her direction, but they understood. The urge to protect and comfort the children whose parents had been taken from them was overwhelming in both humans and animals. 

Kona, Bato, and Hakoda were almost always seen together as the boys grew older. They grew from stumbling kids to trained warriors filled with rage and fear faster than the adults of the tribe could have possibly anticipated.

It was comforting to their mothers to know that when the boys came home with an enormous caribouwhale dragging behind them, they hadn’t been hunting it alone. Kona could protect the boys as they grew more reckless while the older tribesmen did their duties. 

When Bato’s father, along with Hakoda’s brother and twenty other men, decided to set sail out on a ship named the Tootega and work with the Earth Kingdom Navy, Bato begged to go with them. He was young, not even thirteen, but he knew that Hakoda’s father had left and not returned. He didn’t want the same to happen to his dad. 

Hakoda didn’t ask to go with them, he just cried and begged Malook to stay. He wasn’t ready to be an only child. He wasn’t ready to be treated as Chief.

Bato could not go and Malook could not stay, so they compromised. They sent Kona on the ship to keep the men safe. It was silly, in retrospect, to think that one wolfseal could protect a ragtag fleet of warriors against the Fire Nation, but it soothed Bato and Hakoda’s nerves enough that they allowed the men to leave.

Five moon cycles later, they received word that the Tootega had been sunk by firebenders. There were no survivors. 

\--

After the war, when they were tired veterans, when the world was being rebuilt, when they were father figures to some of the most powerful children alive, Bato and Hakoda wanted a pet. 

The topic was first brought to their attention when Toph introduced them to Rocklord, her seeing-eye bulldog. Her head barely reached his shoulder, but it was clear she was in charge. At the Team Avatar dinner that Hakoda was invited to attend, she told them that Rocklord didn’t actually help her see at all, he just wouldn’t leave her alone. Plus, he was unnerving enough that his mere presence discouraged people from speaking to Toph, which she viewed as a benefit.

He couldn’t work out why the sight of him sleeping on the floor filled his heart with a nostalgic longing until Bato mumbled, “He reminds me of Kona, you remember her?” into his ear before bed. 

It could’ve been left there, but after that day, it seemed everyone had a companion. Obviously Aang had his sky bison and lemur, but it didn’t end there. At least half of the Northern Water Tribe had polar bear dogs. The Earth Kingdom cities were filled with people walking their deer dogs or grooming their crococats. The Fire Palace was full of swooping hawks, and the Fire Lord himself was known to show up to meetings cradling a turtleduck. 

Enough years had passed that they could remember Kona without her death weighing on their consciences. They couldn’t go a day without mentioning a random thing they remembered about her.

“Remember how she hated arctic hen?”

“Remember how she would try to eat falling snow?”

“Remember how soft she was?”

“Remember the warmth she brought?”

It didn’t take long for them to realize what their problem was. They needed an animal to complete their family. 

Wolfseals were no longer endangered. They could get a pup to raise as their own if they wanted.

They decided against it. Kona could never be replaced like that.

It was an easy choice to begin looking in other nations, but the search proved to be tougher than they thought.

Poodle monkeys were too pretentious.

Cat deer looked stupid.

Sparrowkeets were far too shrill.

Goat dogs were nice but so spirits damned needy.

They were just about to give up when they found a starving little creature on the ship back from Caldera. A baby newtpup, stowing away in the cargo hold, surviving on any bugs it could find. 

Hakoda tried to stop himself from loving it. It was so ill-suited to southern weather, it would be near untrainable, and it would never grow to be larger than a koalaotter. 

His best efforts failed.

He spent a full day sitting with the shaking animal, quietly cooing to it and gaining its trust. That’s how Bato found him, late at night. He had been searching for his husband to take him to bed, expecting to find him in a room pouring over scrolls. Instead, he found him gently petting a newtpup the size of his hand.

Bato didn’t even pretend to not be in love with it.

They figured out pretty quickly that it was actually a he, and before they could reach the Southern Water Tribe port, he was named Ikku and was a permanent part of their little family.

It was nice, having an animal companion. They sewed him a tiny coat and even tinier boots keep him warm in the snow. They kept a fire going next to his pile of blankets and got bugs shipped in from the Earth Kingdom. When he wasn’t lounging in the sun, he was curled up in Hakoda or Bato’s coat. He would crawl down the Chief’s arm and knock against his hand whenever he penned letters. He was a staple part of their small household, and despite his tiny size, he made the home feel full again.

As he grew larger and learned to hunt with the men, the other tribespeople and native animals grew used to his presence. He was full of energy and curiosity, so he was known to run off for a few sunlengths before returning and sleeping by his fire for three days. 

Ikku attended meetings, sleeping at Hakoda and Bato’s feet while they argued with ambassadors. He nipped at the heels of the littlest children when they wandered too close to the shore. He was just as attached to his people as Kona had once been. 

He couldn’t replace Kona. They were very different animals, they couldn’t be compared. Kona had brought them comfort when they were children who couldn’t comprehend the war, and now they had Ikku to keep them company while their hair turned gray and the echos of the war faded from the world.

**Author's Note:**

> My writing style is literally "avoid dialogue at all costs" and I live by that.  
> I actually ended up drawing Ikku, so if you want to see what he looks like in my head you can see that [on my Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/CDQQdCIjryV)!  
> Title is from Luk Bryan's _'Little Boys Grow Up and Gogs Get Old'_.  
> As always, you can find me on tumblr at [dyoxyys](dyoxyys.tumblr.com)!


End file.
